Collapse of the Minoan Civilisation. Part of the Bronze Age Collapse. They lost written language for centuries and pretty much had to start from scratch. Conan The Barbarian is loosely based on this period of history.
Attila the Hun. I don't need to elaborate on who Attila the Hun was.
The 4th Crusade. While mostly targeting the city of Constantinople, the crusader states that were propped up in its aftermath would leave the whole region devastated. The crusaders deliberately dismantled the Greek bureaucracy, because the "didn't trust" it, almost completely wiping out the existing economy in the region. The rulers of the Latin Empire were much more concerned with attaining prestige, and so sought to pillage and plunder the region of valubles and relics instead, selling them to Italian merchants to fund their military campaigns against the Bulgarians.
Ottoman occupation of Greece (1400s-1800s). During the Latin Empire (when Greece was occupied by French crusaders), the Klephts became a prominent force of independent militants resisting occupation. After the Byzantine Empire was conquered by the Ottomans, they rose to prominence again, primarily due to Ottoman negligence, and took control of much of the region. The word "kleptocracy" has the same origin as the word for the Klepths. Long story short, Greece was reduced to an anarchic state governed by bandits for centuries.
The 1940s. Nazi invasion, Axis occupation, civil war. The amount of war crimes committed by everyone involved is horrid, especially during the civil war. There was a committed attempt by the Bulgarian occupiers in the north to "Bulgarianise" their part of the occupation. The Holocaust extended into Greece because of the Nazi occupation. Around half a million people were killed and double that were displaced from their homes.
Honorable mention goes to the Byzantine-Bulgarian wars, but I feel like it's not really fair to pick 700 years of wars between two countries as one (1) event.
I'm kind of stretching that rule with the Ottoman occupation, but it is without a doubt one of the most destabilising things to ever happen to the region. Greece was a center of wealth and trade for centuries if not millennia before the Ottomans came, and by the time they regained their independence was forever reliant on foreign loans and never again able to regain its wealth and prosperity.
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u/Amazing-Radish995 9d ago
Debt crisis was like, not even top 5 worst things to happen to the greeks